People can relate when I explain that I have a real problem with rejection, but I think that it’s more severe than I often let on. I am *terrified* of rejection. Despite my outward confidence, I am an incredibly insecure person. I assume that most people don’t like me most of the time, even the people who play nice and seem to like me, I often assume that they’re pretending to like me because we have mutual friends. I’m not making this up. I know it’s ridiculous, but it leads me to this crippling terror of being outwardly rejected.
As a result, I rarely add people as friends on Facebook unless I have previously spoken with them face to face and reassured myself that they will accept me as a virtual friend.
Now I can determine in advance who I’m going to decide doesn’t like me. Often, it’s someone who actually does like me, thinks I’m fun and enjoys my company. Or so they claim. And that’s the little voice in my head saying "Well, of course they’re going to say that to your face/your friends." I sometimes am not even really sure that my friends like me. There’s a question with a few of them (and please don’t try to guess, if you’re reading this, I probably don’t mean you) where I wonder if they remain friends with me because they like me or if they remain friends with me because it’s too much work to try to replace me and they’re just being lazy.
I know. I know. Writing this out does make me feel a little silly, but it doesn’t give me anything I didn’t already know. I recognize that these fears have no foundation in reality, but they still exist, so I work around them and, for the most part, I don’t talk about my problems with rejection.
So this past weekend I met a large number of people. People I like, people I hit it off with. I added four people to Facebook – three of whom I had talked to in person about "will you accept my friend request if I send one?". The one I hadn’t talked to about it was the first to accept. There’s some measure of satisfaction in that. What was really validating, though, is that there’s someone I’ve met a couple of times. I like him, he’s a nice guy, but somewhere along the line I convinced myself that he didn’t like me and was only making nice because we have mutual friends. So when he added ME to Facebook, it was a contradiction of this negative assumption.
I rely on Facebook to break those assumptions. It’s codependent, at least a little, I recognize that. But at least I recognize it.
On many different occasions in my life, people have worried unnecessarily about me. I am not the type to inflict serious harm or death on myself. On anyone, but especially on myself. I think I’m too optimistic a person and, frankly, I get far too much out of life to ever even begin to consider choosing death. No matter how depressed I get, I’ve never felt any urges to conclude this life on earth. Once, a friend of mine called me while I was taking a long, hot bath and I didn’t answer the phone. I "hid" in the tub for hours and when I finally got out and checked my messages, there was a voice mail saying, in a panicked voice, "Please, please call me right away. I don’t care what time it is. I’m really worried about you and I’m concerned that you may have done something…"
Which is completely ridiculous. Sometimes I wonder if that particular friend really knows me at all.
But I am a fairly morbid person. I’ll admit that I have considered "ending it all", but not in the way that phrase is generally used. I contemplate faking one’s own death far more often than I contemplate suicide. Now, I should probably clarify that I actually mean that conceptually rather than how it pertains to me. Well, mostly anyway.
Conceptually, I don’t think there’s much that you can think about that is actively dangerous. When I was younger, my friends and I used to plan bank robberies. We’d pick a "good" bank and come up with various scenarios on how we’d get away with it. We never even considered actually carrying out any of our "plans, but it was a fun mental pass time. As long as things remain conceptual, there’s nothing dangerous about it.
When the twin towers fell, one of my early reactions was to wonder how many people used that opportunity to disappear and just start over. Situations like that don’t happen very often, at least not here, so it would have to be a split second decision. Do you call your family and tell them that you’re alright, or do you walk away and let them think that you died in a horrible, chaotic, tragic situation? I am *convinced* that some percentage of the presumed dead really just skipped town and never looked back.
This is not designed to give anyone hope. Even if I’m right (which I am, you know I am), those people aren’t going to all of a sudden change their minds. It would be even less fair to the people they loved to come back from the dead than to remain dead. It’s one of those things where you have to really mean it and once you make that choice it’s made forever.
Which is why I could never make that choice.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve contemplated it. I’m pretty sure that I could find the underworld / underground / fringey types who could provide me with papers and documentation claiming that I’m someone else. I think that I could hide from everyone who could recognize me and since I have one of those faces that everyone seems to think they recognize, I have faith in being able to deny being who I used to be… who they think I am. But forever? Never see anyone I love again? It’s never gotten *that* bad.
But also… it’s not even really a do-over. Let’s say you fake your own death. Sure, for the right price you can probably buy all the degrees you need for a career, but you still have to be able to pull it off. All you have to work with is who you already are, the things you’ve already learned and the experience you’ve already gained. You can’t undo the things that already happened. And that, I think, is what people really want.
This is a fairly typical exchange at my job:
Me: There’s a problem.
Them: Problem? There’s no problems here. Don’t start trouble.
Me: No, seriously, there’s a problem. We need to fix this or it’s going to be a serious issue.
Them: What’s a serious issue? Don’t cause problems. Stop making trouble.
Me: I’m not causing any problems. The problem already exists, I’m just pointing it out.
Them: No you’re not, this is how things are supposed to be. How they are supposed to be is how they are.
Me: Ok, I understand how things are supposed to be. Things are not as they are supposed to be. Can we fix this? It’s causing other issues.
Them: What issues? There are no issues. Show me what you’re looking at and stop causing trouble.
Me: [shows the problem]
Them: Crap. That’s a problem.
Me: That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.
Them: I’ll see what I can do.
Me: *bangs head on desk*